The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and are not admitted prior art.
People of all backgrounds with a variety of fitness goals use workout equipment to improve their strength, health, and overall well-being. Athletes utilize workout equipment off the field to supplement their athletic performance on the field in sports such as football, cycling, basketball, water polo, and running. Bodybuilders use workout equipment to improve their physique and win competitions. Members of the military use workout equipment to maintain rigorous physical performance standards for the purpose of staying physically fit for duty. Some gym goers use workout equipment with a focus on burning calories and losing weight. Others use workout equipment to strengthen their bodies and consequently improve physical and mental health.
Athletes, bodybuilders, and anyone following a serious training program will track their progress so as to make adjustments and improvements that lead to accomplishing their fitness objectives. Tracking progress helps maintain consistency even when the bodily improvements are not obvious, such as in the early stages of a new workout routine.
Without a system to accurately record and analyze fitness performance, people who want to become stronger and more physically fit do not have an easy and consistent way to track their strength training progress and therefore do not have a way to stick with their strength training workout regime.
Automating the process of tracking workouts is advantageous in many ways. At the outset, it eliminates the tedious process of an individual manually entering information about workouts. Also, automated tracking allows for different types of information to be recorded. Certain metrics such as average and instantaneous power can be captured by automated tracking that are not easily measured in other ways. This data can then be analyzed in a variety of forms to provide deeper insights.
Automation requires sensors or detectors that are embedded in workout equipment. Despite the fact that fully automated tracking solutions currently exist to track workouts for endurance sports, there currently does not exist a fully automated solution for tracking gym workouts that utilize strength training equipment.
For instance, the barbell is a piece of strength training workout equipment that is commonly used in gyms. It described as an elongated cylindrical or squared bar with two ends, each end adapted to accept weights, and a gripping portion is located between each end. It can be used in many exercises, such as bench press, arm curl, power clean, or squat.
The lat bar is another piece of strength training workout equipment that is commonly used in gyms. It is generally clipped to a cable that is connected to a stack of weights. It can be used for exercises such as lat pulldown, cable rows, and cable curls.
The close grip seated row bar is another example of a piece of strength training workout equipment that is commonly used in gyms. It is also clipped to a cable that is connected to a stack of weights. It has many uses, but is generally used for seated cable rows.
A workout sensing system which tracks workouts utilizing the barbell, lat bar, close grip seated row bar, or any other similar device would be useful in many gym applications. It would provide a better way to manage mass training programs implemented by the military, high school, college, and professional athletic programs. It would provide more data and better analytics for the coaches of Olympic and professional athletes. Bodybuilders would no longer need to manually enter their workouts. Those trying to lose weight would be able to track calories burned during the strength training portion of their workout. And regardless of goals, these sensors or detectors would provide everyone with an accurate way to record their workouts for future reference and motivation.